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by jdauriemma 3543 days ago
How it feels to learn parallel parking in 2016

"I want to parallel park in that parking space."

You'll need a car first.

"When I was a kid I just walked into the parking spaces."

Yeah, but that's not really parallel parking, you were just walking into a parking space.

"Oh ok. So I'll get a car then."

Well, it's not that simple, you have to actually get inside the car in order to parallel park.

"What? Can't I just push the car?"

No way! First you have to unlock the car, start it and put it in gear.

"Oh. OK, how do I do that?"

First take out your key.

"What's that?"

It's a small attachment that should have come with your car. Then press the unlock button.

"I unlocked it and am sitting in the seat. Ready to park?

"Not quite. first, you need to put the key in the ignition"

What is an ignition?

"It's the small hole on the side of the steering wheel. Now turn it. No, the other way.

"OK, let's parallel park!"

Hold on now, you need to adjust your seat, rearview mirrors and side view mirrors to ensure that you can drive safely.

"But I don't want to drive, I just want to parallel park!"

It doesn't work like that.

"Fine. How do I get these side view mirrors to adjust?"

Well, first you have to select which mirror you want using the switch to your left, then push the directional arrows until it's at the correct angle.

"How do I know what the correct angle is?"

There are lots of opinions about this, just search Stack Overflow.

"This seems like a good angle. Let's park!"

Hold your horses, first you have to put the car in Drive...

...

Some things that we take for granted as simple really aren't and never have been. Within a generation the above will be completely outdated knowledge and you'll get a car from point A to point B using an app, with its own complexities and absurdities at which we can poke fun in blog posts.

1 comments

Just because you put words in that format doesn't make this a good analogy. You can teach someone to drive, including parallel parking in a couple of hours and then they just have to practice. The javascript ecosystem is legitimately complex. You can't just hand wave that away with a rhetorical flourish.
I agree that the JavaScript ecosystem is complex, that's why I said it in my comment. I'm just making fun of the notion that we should expect simplicity when web development has never been simple.

I have JavaScript Fatigue Fatigue.

Part of the reason why people can learn to drive in hours is because they have been riding in cars as passengers since birth. Though new at driving, they have lots of contextual knowledge and awareness. If you took someone who grew up on a desert island and taught them to parallel park, it would take considerably longer.

Likewise, experienced web developers have years of contextual knowledge of CLIs, documentation and coding. An experienced dev can reasonably be expected to bootstrap a JavaScript app within a few hours, even if they only used jQuery in the past.

Also because we have evolved with complex spatial awareness as an innate trait. Yes, I have been developing websites since 1994, and I have been on the bleeding edge most of that time. Of course I can come up to speed with whatever stack du jour the kids are fawning over these days, but that doesn't make it simple.